Thermodynamic equilibrium constant method and mathematical model are used to analyze the investigating effects of temperature, alpha[oxygen-methane molar ratio] and beta [carbon dioxide-methane molar ratio] on characteristics of oxidative CO2 reforming of methane reaction over Ni/Al2O3 catalysts to produce hydrogen in the membrane reactor. While keeping temperature at 1100 K, the membrane reactor is no longer useful to separate hydrogen when alpha > 0.6 for hydrogen in reaction side is no longer to permeate side. When increasing beta, the methane conversion goes up firstly until the beta is 1.3, which is higher than the inflection point at 1.1 in the model prediction. The hydrogen yield peaks at beta = 0.5 in permeate side. Increasing the temperature or reducing the a will cause the molar ratio of H-2/CO increase. However, changing a has no significant effect on adjusting the molar ratio of H-2/CO. By establishing equilibrium reaction model, the system performance can be accurately predicted. (C) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.